I have helped thousands of people start up their own home based businesses using the Internet. Over time, I have come to recognize two of the most important factors for identifying people that should NOT start a home based business.
If a prospective entrepreneur says something like...
"I'm broke and need to make some money...fast!"
or,
"I want to start a home business, but I don't want to spend anything on it until after I start earning some money."
...it is certain that they have not "gotten real" and should not attempt to start a home business under either of those conditions. I refer to them as the "death sentences" for starting a home based business.
Almost equally important is the need to have realistic economic expectations when undertaking a home based business. There is no magic here, folks. A home based business provides many rewards such as working in the comfort of your own home, avoiding a stressful commute, being your own boss, setting your own hours, no dress code, etc., etc., but anyone that is also expecting "instant riches" is sadly mistaken.
There are a tremendous number of home business and work at home opportunities offered on the Internet. Many of these are all hype and try to convince you that you will be making huge amounts of money in very little time (you know, stuff like..."you will be making $5,000 per week, and more, in just a few weeks!"). You should avoid these like the plague...if they were for real everyone would be doing it.
Study the opportunities carefully and select the home business opportunity that seems to fit your own particular style or talents. What is a good choice for one person may be a very poor fit for someone else. The common thread that applies to everyone is that you must be "for real" (as indicated above) and the business opportunity itself must be "for real".
From what I have seen and experienced, to quit is the greatest temptation during the first year of working at a home-based business. If smoking was like working at a home-based business, the occurrence of lung cancer would be dramatically reduced.
It is a known fact that a majority of the people that undertake a work at home business do not achieve real success. There are several reasons for this, but one of the primary reasons is that these people get frustrated and do not allow themselves enough time to succeed.
In the early going, one of the most difficult things about developing a new home based business is dealing with the emotional roller coaster that can result from the highs (successes) and lows (temporary setbacks) you are almost certain to experience. Once you have done the research and decided on a particular home based business opportunity, you really need to focus on persistence and realize that any real business will not just automatically become successful in a matter of days or weeks. You should be prepared to give it your best sustained effort for at least 6 to 12 months in order to begin to build a solid business base and begin to see some good income.
Highs and lows were something that I began to notice when I first started a home based business. I have many years of top level management experience in "traditional" corporations and have experienced lots of business cycles (corporate "ups and downs"), but the natural "ups and downs" that occur in a home business (particularly in the early stages) can be brutal from an emotional standpoint if you don't prepare yourself in advance for the fact that it is a basic law of nature...it will be a rocky road until you have spent enough time and effort to build your business to a level that sort of smoothes out the peaks and valleys.
The impact of the highs and lows you will probably experience in developing your home based business is amplified by the fact that you are now in business on your own. You are the boss and get to make all the decisions, but you are also on your own in dealing with the frustrations that will occur along the way while you are developing your business.
When working at home a person can, at times, experience a feeling of isolation which is probably brought on by the lack of interaction of a work force environment.
There can also be periods of doubt in the early going...gee, did I pick a viable business opportunity?...am I doing the right things to develop my business?...when will I start making a profit?, and so on.
You are most likely going to experience the "two steps forward and one step backward" syndrome and the ever-looming temptation to become discouraged. However, keep in mind that as long as you have more steps going forward than backward, you will eventually get ahead! Simple, but often overlooked.
Relatively minor setbacks can seem huge in the early stages of developing a work at home business and can really contribute to some noticeable "mood swings". For example, if you are just starting out and you have four customers/clients and you happen to lose one...that's a 25% drop! However, if you fast-forward in time to the point where you have hundreds of customers/clients and you lose one...that's just a mere fraction of 1%! Exactly the same event, just at a different point in time.
Hang in there and just keep on keepin' on. If you have chosen a viable home business opportunity (one that has been around for awhile and in which some other people are having success) you will achieve success, but it takes time and there will be ups and downs along the way. Remember the old saying..."it takes a long time to become an overnight success"
Where does it ever end? I've been involved with Internet-based home businesses for several years and I continue to be exposed to a seemingly endless barrage of offers (all costing me money, of course) claiming to be "the secret" for making a fantastic income, in a very short time, and with very little effort involved.
I must admit that I may have a slightly self-serving reason for addressing this topic. My articles are published on my home-based business websites for the purpose of trying to give prospective team members a true sense of what is really involved with starting and developing a successful home based business. The self-serving part, I suppose, is that I want people joining my team to have the straight scoop going in so that we don't waste each other's time. I admit to being selfish in this regard (I don't want to waste time working with people that have unrealistic expectations), but it is also very efficient for both parties involved, so it is not a totally one-way thing.
Now, back to the topic at hand. There's no magic here, folks. Once you have selected the home business that you are going to pursue, there are no substitutes for time and effort in developing your business. A dream of being an "overnight success" is just that, a dream.
I can tell you from personal experience, that once you "pay your dues" and begin to have real success with a home based business, it is really terrific. Think about Nirvana or Valhalla, take your pick, but in any event it's really sweet.
When I started developing a home based business, making a good income was obviously an objective, but I also had other sub-objectives. One of the most important things was to have nearly total time flexibility (I mean, if I was willing to continue to wear the 9-5 Mon-Fri collar I could just have just stayed in the previously "traditional" work force).
Time flexibility was (and still is) a "biggie" for me. Many people working at home have the same need for various reasons. For work at home moms, a home business can be a real godsend to accommodate the hectic time pressures, particularly when the kids are quite young and mom is also spelled "transportation".
In my own particular case, the reason is not quite so noble...I just want (need?) to be able to pick up my fly rod and go fishing at a moments notice (sometimes I'll be gone for a week or two at a time, but now the business has enough momentum that it keeps on operating just as well as if I were here tending to it on a daily basis).
Bear in mind, I am only able do the breakaway thing now that I have put in all the up-front time and effort and now have developed enough kinetic energy in my home-based Internet business to be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor.
